“What?......WHAT?”

                                             story  by Patrick Breheny

     Don and Clara were watching a TV game show where you had to vote on a tablet whether or not the contestant  a) had answered correctly, and if so, b)was he/she furnished the information in advance. Guessing right got you stamps to put in your book, and stamps meant prizes! For a few stamps, a porcelain figure; for about a million stamps a new electric auto that was really a golf cart for streets. They were showing that bumper cars prize when Clara’s brother Ralph came into the living room. “Wouldn’t want to get crushed in that between a truck and a bus,” Ralph said.

     He’d come in from outside and had a case of eight ounce cans of beer with him. He said, “Still cold,” as he opened a beer for himself but didn’t offer any. Don and Clara didn’t smoke, so Ralph had to drink the first beer fast to have an ashtray because Clara did notice and complain if he flicked ashes on the carpet, though she never seemed aware of the attendant smoke.

     On the TV, a player rang a buzzer and said “St. Lawrence” to a question about a link between Indians and the Great Lakes. Don clicked wrong. Clara said, “Yeah. Michigan is an Indian word.,” Don said, “And there’s the Huron tribe.” The TV m.c. said “Correct” and explained that missionaries had tried to convert the Indians and that was the link to St. Lawrence. Don said, “They’d say she was right if she said Ohio because its close to Indiana.”  Clara said, “Oh Don, you’re so funny.”

     Don and Clara, scoring on the same tablet, now had to decide YES or NO to Fixed. They knew of course any time a contestants got answers right they either had pre-information, or the host would accept any answer they gave. It was a matter of odds. How many of the last answers had been NO to Fixed before the show would admit to another.

     Concentrating as they were, they didn’t notice that Ralph had already spread half a dozen empty beer can ash trays on various tables and arm rests around the living room. They voted YES to Fixed but the m.c. said “No” and they screamed “Liar!” Clara said, “I hope they haven’t figured out some way to hear us.”

      They still didn’t have any stamps for their book, which Don acknowledged gave “credibility to your listening-in-on-us theory.” “Survey ants” Clara purred, content to have her opinion validated. But Don could always spoil a moment. “Survey lance,” he corrected.

     It was later, and now the room was littered with Don’s improvised ash trays. He hadn’t even climbed up on the sofa or into an armchair, just fell asleep nice-as-you-please on the floor. Don said, “He slept well enough last night, and he hasn’t done anything.” Clara was kinder to her younger brother. “He gets tired so easily. He carried that heavy box home with him.”

     There was a new game on the TV. First they had to turn the volume on the TV up higher than Ralph’s snoring, go around and put out all the smoldering butts he’d left, then shove the empty cans into the ripped beer carton and put that outside in the garbage.

     Clara declared, “He has heart. He’ll wake up after a while, and you know he’ll have the energy to go back to the store.” She went back to her seat with Don on the sectional in front of the TV, barely noticing as she stepped over Ralph.

     Don commented, “This new show is about detecting clues.”

     Clara said, “Oh, Don, we’re good at that, aren’t we?”

     “Sure are. And you know their motto: ‘They’re all around you’”

     “Well, I can tell Ralph shouldn’t smoke so much, can’t you?”

     “Yeah, but I suppose there could be worse things he’d be doing.”

     “Sure could. Let turn that volume up a little more.”

copr  Patrick Breheny